The Light and How to Swing It: Latest holy paladin preview for Mists of Pandaria
by Chase Christian 
Nov 27th 2011 at 6:00PM
The official Mists of Pandaria talent calculators were released by Blizzard recently, including a list of each talent tree's abilities. By diving into the skill list and analyzing the talents, there is a lot of information available. Most of the information is old, as we learned about many of the changes at BlizzCon and in the developer question and answer sessions.
It's hard to draw any concrete conclusions from the talent preview because the Blizzard team has stated that everything is still up in the air. Since the information is still in a pre-alpha state, I can guarantee you that what we're seeing today will be changed dramatically by the time Mists of Pandaria is released. While we can't make any firm predictions, we can gain some insight into the direction that holy paladins are headed, and we can offer feedback to the developers on that direction.
Where are the auras?
The first thing that I noticed when perusing our ability list was that auras were conspicuously missing. While Bashiok, the community manager, claimed that there were definitely abilities missing from the trees accidentally, I am not sure that's the case here. Not only are all of our auras missing from all three trees, but Aura Mastery was changed too. Instead of being called Aura Mastery, its new name is Devotion Aura, and it provides the raid with 6 seconds of immunity to silences and interrupts and also reduces our damage taken some types of magical damage by 20%. In essence, it's like if we used Aura Mastery today, but with Concentration Aura and Resistance Aura active at the same time.
While Aura Mastery being called Devotion Aura could easily be a mistake in the talent calculator, I think that we might actually see the removal of auras from our toolset. Our Blessing of Kings will no longer increase resistances, as it does today, indicating that having buff-based resistances might be a thing of the past. Note that the new Devotion Aura/Aura Mastery doesn't increase our resistances but rather cuts our incoming magical damage by a flat percentage. Are we seeing the end of auras? Are we seeing the end of resistances? I'm sure we'll be hearing more about these possibilities in the coming months.
Where's Exorcism?
Holy paladins are gaining a new damage-dealing ability in Mists of Pandaria. Holy Wrath is becoming a holy-only move, and its cooldown is being removed but it gains a cast time. We can spam Holy Wrath to deal damage to any nearby targets. In addition, Holy Wrath is gaining the Denounce effect, preventing our targets from being able to deal critical strikes. What we appear to be missing now is a single-target or ranged spell. Normally Exorcism fills that role for us, giving us some minor DPS capabilities at range. Unfortunately, Exorcism is missing from holy's ability list, even though retribution paladins still have access to it. Hopefully this is merely an oversight and we'll see its swift return. We're also receiving a new ability at level 87, Blinding Light. It's an AoE blind that will give us an extra CC option.
Blizzard has been baking
Crusader Aura is now baked into every paladin's base abilities. What's interesting is that it's no longer known as an aura but rather Heart of the Crusader, further promoting the idea that auras are being removed. Our Glyph of Seal of Insight is also baked into our normal Seal of Insight, which will open up a glyph slot for us in Mists. The new Supplication passive ability will increase the healing done by our Flash of Light after we score a kill by 300%, which is similar to how Crusade works with Holy Light today.
We're still hybrids
Holy paladins will be losing a few of the retribution and protection abilities that we have access to today, but we're also keeping a few key spells. We'll have Divine Protection to help us mitigate damage, while we can use Righteous Fury and Hand of Reckoning to manage threat. We'll also be keeping Rebuke, allowing us to continue to add value by interrupting. Crusader Strike is also around and can be used to generate holy power points.
On the flip side, holy paladins are gaining exclusive access to several spells. Holy Radiance and Divine Plea are going to become holy-only, which will weaken the ability of retribution and protection paladins to help out with healing. They can make up for the losses by choosing some of the healing talents to supplement their healing options. Holy paladins will also be the only paladins receiving Holy Light and Divine Light, limiting the other paladins to Flash of Light. You'll notice that any healing talents or abilities in the protection and retribution trees only reference Flash of Light now.
The Light and How to Swing It: Holy helps holy paladins become the powerful healers we're destined to be. Find out just how masterful mastery healing can be, gear up with the latest gear, and learn how to PvP as a holy paladin.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ilmyrn Nov 27th 2011 6:31PM
I'd hate to see Auras go the way of the dodo. Since Diablo 2, they've been a part of the Paladin, and they really play into the image of the righteous warrior inspiring his companions just by his presence.
Salculd Nov 28th 2011 12:26AM
I feel the same way. Auras are a huge hallmark of the class.
Aticus Nov 27th 2011 6:46PM
I really will be displeased if I won't be able to level as a holy paladin without using the dungeon finder. If they take away Exorcism, all we would have left is Shock and Judge with an AOE Holy Wrath. The damage just isn't there as it was back in vanilla and BC. Exorcism was a great addition.
But, maybe it was just one of those weird mishaps that blizzard forgot to add in.
Discolando Nov 27th 2011 10:08PM
Vanilla? There was nothing (and I mean *nothing*) worthwhile about leveling a holy paladin from 1-60 in vanilla. Believe me, I did it.
Aticus Nov 27th 2011 10:10PM
To each his own I guess. I enjoyed it :)
Marolas Nov 28th 2011 1:54AM
The only character I leveled in vanilla was a holy paladin, so I don't have any other precedent to base it off of, but I can tell you from personal experience that Marolas spent way more time in Desolace than he should have while leveling. That zone just dragged on and on and on without a mount to help.
Also, I'm in complete agreement about how removing the Auras from a Paladin takes away from what it means to play the class. My favorite thing about the paladin heroes from Warcraft 3 was the passive auras, and to get rid of them is a really confusing and abrupt alteration. I can handle the changes to my talent trees, but don't change who I am!
Sumadin Nov 28th 2011 1:31PM
Every second hero in Wc3 had an aura through. Not really paladin specific.
Ebylon Nov 27th 2011 7:42PM
Holy Shock might fit our needs for leveling anyway. You'll notice it does x damage divided amongst nearby mobs, so, if you're single pulling (likely as a solo holy) you should be able to nuke them fairly effectively.
Ebylon Nov 27th 2011 7:50PM
My bad, Holy Wrath.
tiffer007 Nov 27th 2011 8:56PM
Wow is worse and worse.the artist use too many same pics,the classes,the dungons.our gears are better and better,but our sentiment grow colder and colder.Whats more,there is a simple expressions,i can get about 170 USD from my work every day,i can farm 10K gold a day,and on many G sites,10K gold is about 20USD,so if i pay a whole day to farm 10K gold,i will lose my 150USD.Whats the fk!
Diatenium Nov 28th 2011 2:22AM
I can see holy wrath working fairly well in a pvp environment, not for the damage but for the AoE crit lockouts. The limitation to range, however, becomes a problem in low-number environments like arena, I can see a glyph for Holy Wrath where we'd get double the range but a strict 2-3 target limit to how many people it can hit.
Speaking of glyphs, I -knew- they'd bake the Insight glyph into the seal, now this makes it the "proper" paladin seal. I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that this clears some of the clutter in our prime glyph selection, though, we can't really talk about glyphs because they'll most likely be heavily re-worked in 5.0.
Cutting auras is a real kick in the nuts for me. Auras had problems, Retribution aura wasn't useful, Crusader aura was -less- than useful, and as a holy paladin you were always going to use resistance aura in PvE and either that or Concentration in PvP. But I don't think cutting them entirely was the way to go.
What they needed was a bit of an overhaul, Personally I felt Retribution aura should have been cut and Ret spec could briefly use it as a sort of "Absorbed X% damage received up to Y amount of damage then redirects it back at attacker after buff expires", basically a unique sort of dps raid cooldown. Devotion aura should have provided a flat physical damage reduction percentage, and I think Crusader aura should have provided, like, a 5% non-stacking running speed buff--worse than Lavawalker but better than nothing.
Another option would have been to add new auras, but I think I can explain why they decided to cut them entirely: Too many unique raid buffs that would become mandatory if made too powerful or too boring if kept the way they are now.
I also agree with you that the lack of resistance stats on buffs suggests it's getting cut entirely, it would make sense since we haven't seen resistance stats on gear since Ulduar.
Finally, Daybreak is missing from the talent calculator, this is the only talent I can safely assume was forgotten about since it doesn't make sense that they'd remove it.
If we speculate, for a moment, that it was deliberately removed, then the reasoning would be that paladins can queue up too many instant-cast heals in pvp. I think that reason is dumb and probably the easiest way to fix that would just be to prevent FoL from proccing the ability, simple.
Diatenium Nov 28th 2011 2:45AM
I should correct myself in the second Paragraph, when I mean a "proper" paladin seal, I mean a Proper -holy- paladin seal, in the sense that it's a seal that makes us better at our job. In 4.3 the Seal does not do this, the glyph for it does, which is quite a baffling design choice but one we'll just have to deal with until 5.0.
Let's talk about Seal of Insight in detail for a moment. First off, notice that none of the Seals say "For 30 minuets", which implies that Seals have no duration anymore. It's entirely possible that they're turning Seals into stances to replace Auras but that's purely speculation on my part.
Furthermore, notice that all the Seals don't say "Single-target melee attacks" and just "Direct attacks", so it's entirely possible that the Seal's effect can proc of spells like judgement or Holy shock.
This isn't a huge deal except for number crunching, but in order really explore this we need to know a few other things. How often does it proc, for example? If it procs all the time, then you have to subtract the base mana gains from direct spells, For example, Judgement only costs 1% of your base mana if it always procs the seal, meaning that there's so real penalty for using it whenever to maintain Judgements of the Pure.
Really, though, we don't even know if the seals were written this way purely for brevity's sake and we can't be sure this is how they'll properly end up, still it's an interesting idea to explore, I find.
Alysandir Nov 28th 2011 1:11PM
I'm okay with auras going away. Yes, it was a distinct thing paladins brought to the raid, but in seven years, auras have *never* lived up to the original design intent of switching auras on the fly on an "as needed" basis. Aura management was no different than buff management (figure out who's doing what, set it, forget it); it simply used a different mechanic. Furthermore, how many real options do you have for each spec? One for travel. One for tanking. One for melee. One for PVP (given that silence effects have largely been removed from dungeons/raids). One for, well...default, since resistance isn't what it used to be, but you ran it as holy because it was all that was left. Face it...auras are a vestigial limb from the old game that really don't add anything to the modern game. If they aren't going to revamp them completely, make them something worth paying attention to, then just get rid of them.
As for the holy changes, I will be a sad penguin if Exorcism goes away. Holy paladins have long been the basement dwellers for contributory DPS (and that really hasn't changed), but at least talented Exorcism let us chip in *something* if all we were doing was standing around. We're already losing the need to judge on a consistent basis; why should this go away too? Would love to see a Telluric Current-style regen mechanic based on Exorcism.
Silkain Nov 28th 2011 5:24PM
I Think the thing I noticed most about looking through the new talents was the Selfless Healer talent and how it contradicts with chase's opinion that we wont be judging as often due to judgement costing mana and it being not necessary as the mana replen mechanic will be every 30 seconds.
I was looking at Judgement and at the moment it costs 5% base mana and can be used every 6 seconds. So 2 Judgements for 10% base mana which is less than the cost of a Holy Light which is 12% base mana means I can then cast a Free Flash Heal which is usually 31% base mana on a friendly target.
I can see myself Judging every time it's off cool down and using those free Flash Heals constantly. This surely must be a mana saver for us to the point this talent wont make it to live or am i wrong in my thinking
Boobah Nov 29th 2011 2:11AM
So it's a Flash of Light that takes more than three times as long to cast (Judgement, despite being locked out by silence, is a physical attack, so haste doesn't modify its GCD) heals for twice as much as normal and cost about a third of normal. Oh, and if you drop it on your Beacon, it still only generates one Holy Power.
So yeah, it's nice and all. But so's a 30% chance to not spend holy power on your heals. Or the ability to use holy power to preemptively shield a target.
Stevedolben Nov 29th 2011 4:41PM
@ Boobah
I think you are missing the point on how the Talent works. It will make your flash of light Instant Cast and Heal for 100% and cost 0 mana.
So for every 2 judgements you get a free heal that generally hits for 15k in decent gear double what holy light does. Every 12 seconds a free 15k heal that cost you just 10% of your base mana less than what a single holy light would have cost. I think its 2342 mana at L85 roughly to get a 15k heal.
The increased throughput will probably work out better than a 30% chance not to use holy power which you can make back very quickly anyway or a lacklustre shield. In pvp i can imagine this being incredibly powerful to ret palladins to the point it will never see live.